


Because I know you (I can reach through)

by Ellarend



Series: I know it's warmer where you are [2]
Category: Terminator: Dark Fate
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:55:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21694213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellarend/pseuds/Ellarend
Summary: Some notes:This has triggers for foster care/mentions of orphaned children/adoption.This is a companion piece to 'Don't Wake Me Up (I'm Trying to Find You)' and won't make a whole lot of sense unless you've read the first couple of chapters of that work. I really needed a break from that one so decided to start this one early :) It's Grace's POV through-out the events of that story.I have no idea what Grace's full name is, couldn't find anything about it online, so I made one up - happy to change it if there's a fandom consensus around another name :)I've made her a little older here than I think she might be in the movie.This one won't get finished until Don't Wake Me Up is fully up on Ao3, as I'll be referencing stuff from that story here.Title also comes from Lianne La Havas - Don't Wake Me Up
Relationships: Grace & Dani Ramos, Grace/Dani Ramos
Series: I know it's warmer where you are [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551895
Comments: 41
Kudos: 111





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes:  
> This has triggers for foster care/mentions of orphaned children/adoption. 
> 
> This is a companion piece to 'Don't Wake Me Up (I'm Trying to Find You)' and won't make a whole lot of sense unless you've read the first couple of chapters of that work. I really needed a break from that one so decided to start this one early :) It's Grace's POV through-out the events of that story.
> 
> I have no idea what Grace's full name is, couldn't find anything about it online, so I made one up - happy to change it if there's a fandom consensus around another name :) 
> 
> I've made her a little older here than I think she might be in the movie.
> 
> This one won't get finished until Don't Wake Me Up is fully up on Ao3, as I'll be referencing stuff from that story here.
> 
> Title also comes from Lianne La Havas - Don't Wake Me Up

Grace Elizabeth Christine Maxwell is fifteen years, two months and one hundred and three days old when she’s rescued by Daniella Ramos from a group of scavengers. 

Not that she _needed_ rescuing, no - she’s fifteen, almost an adult, and she’s been surviving pretty well on her own the last few years, thank you, but, well...maybe this situation wasn’t going to go _exactly_ her way...so maybe it’s pretty cool that this Daniella comes along when she does. The way she breezes through the scavengers, it’s exhilarating and terrifying, and Grace doesn’t know what to say to this woman who kicks ass one minute and who bends down to her with a face full of compassion and kindness the next.

To be honest, she’s expecting the worst. She’s heard stories of kids who disappear, because human beings don’t stop being awful and shit and gross just because the world’s ending, and a pretty face doesn’t mean this woman isn’t going to try something bad. But...no. This Daniella - Dani - seems genuinely happy to see her, and she leads her out into the street, makes some sort of arcane gesture and suddenly militia fighters are popping up like whac-a-moles. 

Grace thinks it’s pretty cool that the woman next to her is part of the resistance - when she realises that she’s _leading_ it, it blows her mind. She watches the other woman effortlessly bossing grown men around; men that Grace would shy away from meeting out here, but to Dani are friends, soldiers, subordinates. She’s coordinating their retreat through the city to a safe-house with practised ease, and Grace can’t take her eyes off her. 

* 

Dani is super kind, but distant. Their first night on base, Dani lets her sleep on the old couch in her quarters - it’s the safest Grace has felt in months, the best sleep she’s had in years - but after that they sit down and talk about Grace maybe staying with a nice family. Grace is resistant at first - she wants to stay with Dani, wants to learn _everything_ from this woman - but Dani explains gently that she moves around a lot, through dangerous places, and it wouldn’t be safe for Grace to travel with her. 

She does explain that, _if_ Grace wants to, she can become a soldier when she’s old enough, and then she’ll be able to travel more, but she’s quick to stress that she doesn’t have to do that - she can be anything she wants to be. 

Grace thinks that being a soldier sounds _awesome_. She latches on to that idea immediately; imagines herself protecting Dani, saving her from a Machine attack, being the hero. She’d be able to protect herself; keep scavengers and perverts away, be _safe_. Sounds good to her. 

She tells as much to Dani, excited and animated, and doesn’t understand Dani’s sad smile. It’s gone as soon as it manifests, but Grace doesn’t understand why Dani isn’t as excited as she is about this. 

So, Grace acquiesces to the idea of staying with the family, as much as she doesn’t want to, and ‘home’ becomes a disused army base in the middle of no-where outside the city, ringed by defences, and a small prefab house lived in by a middle-aged couple. They seem nice - Jenny and Doug, she’s from Indiana, he’s from Vancouver, both calm and prone to laughing at what Grace thinks are _terrible_ jokes - but Grace still doesn’t trust them, not yet, and even less so when Dani disappears and leaves her there with them alone. 

For the first few months, Grace keeps expecting everything to change. She watches Jenny and Doug for any sign of any sick shit, but them stay resolutely, frustratingly normal. Jenny - she’s a doctor, one of the few that they have, and he’s something to do with logistics or something. Still, she keeps a bag packed, hidden under the bed, and steals packaged food when she can to stock it. She even, once, decides to go - waiting for the other shoe to drop is _too hard_ \- but she only gets as far as the gatehouse before Dani swoops in out of no-where and gently convinces her to head back, to give them another go. 

She confides in Dani, her fears that they won’t be what they seem, and Dani promises that if they try any ‘stupid shit’ (her words, not Dani's), Dani will be there - nothing bad will happen to Grace. Grace nods, feeling the unfamiliar stirring of trust re-awakening within her, and follows Dani back to her home.

She feels bad, when they get there - Doug and Jenny are obviously worried, and they fuss around her a little too much until Dani calls them into another room. When they re-emerge, they're more careful to keep a little bit of distance, and they reassure her that she’s safe, that nothing will hurt her here. 

She - maybe, a little, maybe - starts to believe them, because she can tell that Dani does. 

*

She misses her parents like crazy. She’s not stupid; she knows they’re not coming back, but...the grief sneaks up on her, tearing into her in a way that makes her breathless. She’s a child without her mom or dad, and some nights that grief combines with her experiences on the streets the last few years to send her spiralling into horrific nightmares of blood and Machine presence and fear. 

She lashes out, early on, when Jenny comes barrelling through the door, gathering her up in her arms and trying to provide comfort: pushes her away, screaming for her own mother in the darkness of the unfamiliar room. Jenny disappears, re-appears later with a hot drink while Grace is turned to the wall, sobbing, and runs a hand down her back. 

“Tell me about her,” Is all she says, and after a moment, Grace starts to pour out everything she can remember, words spilling out of her, tripping and tumbling off her tongue as she tries to climb back into memories where Mom and Dad and Home and School were the most important things. 

Jenny listens to everything, calm and quiet, resting a hand on her shoulder or knee when she’ll let her, just sitting attentively when she won’t, and after a while Grace feels purged, feels...not better, but not as sad as she did. Jenny smiles at, picks up the tea mug, leans down and kisses her on the forehead as she leaves, and somehow, Grace manages to get back to sleep. 

*

Dani visits more, after her runaway attempt. Not often, and she doesn’t stay long, but she’ll stop by now and again, have a tea or coffee with Jenny and Doug, see how Grace is getting on. 

Grace wishes she would stay longer, but she always has somewhere to be - from what she can tell from the conversations they have when she’s out of the room, the resistance is growing, changing, and Dani’s still at the head of it, still leading the charge. It makes Grace like Dani even more, that this diminutive woman who's pulling humanity up by its bootstraps. It gives Grace something to aspire to, something to work toward. 

*

Not long after that, Jenny and Doug tell her a new school is starting soon; they’ve finally found enough space, enough teachers and enough _safety_ to start thinking about the future. Grace doesn't like the idea, at first. It feels like a step backwards - she’s too old to go back to school, she wants to _fight_ with Dani - but Jenny and Doug gently explain that she won’t be able to unless she does this first, and that it’ll be great to be around people her own age. Grace vehemently disagrees. She met gangs of kids when she was first alone, and those experiences are some of the worst she had on the streets; she’s not keen to go back into that situation. 

But eventually they talk her into it, and the next week she's heading toward an old warehouse on a newly cleared part of the base. ‘School’ then meant brick-built buildings with clean desks, a canteen, warmth, the smell of glue, and math homework; ‘School’ now is the basement area of an old warehouse, underground and safe, four small classrooms, a hallway, some toilets and a ‘lunchroom’. They’re escorted there by soldiers, 

On the first day, she’s angry and scared and hesitant and a million other things. She’s also the tallest - she’s suddenly had another growth spurt - and that makes her a walking target amid the supposed normalcy of their new School environment. She hunches as she enters the classroom, tries to make herself smaller, but she can tell it doesn’t work.

But actually...the first day is...it’s okay. No-one really knows what to do, or how to speak to anyone else, and there’s a moment where the kids try to out-tragic each other, stories of dead parents and brothers and sisters told with deliberate drama as they try and work out a hierarchy with the only currency they have...but it turns out: everyone is a little bit broken, so no-one wins, and everyone comes out of that feeling a little bit sad, but a little bit like they might have stuff in common.

School is...well...she doesn’t hate it. 

*

Grace Elizabeth Christine Maxwell is sixteen years, seven months and twenty days old when she realises how pretty Dani is. Like… _really_ pretty. She doesn’t know she didn’t see it before, but now that she has, she can’t un-see it. Every time she sees Dani now, her heart starts pounding in her chest, her palms get sweaty, and she can’t think of the words to say to her. Where she used to have so many words - how she was getting on, how she was looking forward to being Dani’s soldier, how Jenny and Doug were _ooookkaaay_ , she supposed - now, her mouth turns desert-dry and she can only run hands through messy hair instead. 

Dani just smiles at her as she accepts a coffee from Jenny, and Grace’s heart flip-flops - she doesn’t know how everyone in the room isn’t just in awe of this woman. All those Taylor Swift songs she used to listen to before the world blew up suddenly make _so much sense_. 

She’s pretty sure she has a huge crush on Dani. 

*

She decides that if she can’t talk to Dani, she’ll write her a letter instead. She remembers phones and computers and emails and texts, but all of that is gone for now, and it’s old fashioned pen and paper or nothing. 

Her handwriting is getting better now that she’s back in school, and she tries to make it look amazing, works really hard to make it look adult and neat while she’s explaining in great detail how great she thinks Dani is, and why they ought to, maybe, go on a date. It’s top-notch: clear, concise and yet emotional and deep, and Grace thinks it’s the best thing she’s ever written. She pours her heart into the words, and at the end feels like, well...it’s a masterpiece. She tucks it into her desk draw, and can’t wait for the next time Dani visits. 

* 

She doesn’t know how Jenny figures it out, her crush on Dani - she’s being pretty damn discreet, she thinks - but she does. She even, somehow, guesses about the letter - Grace is astounded - and she ends up being talked into going to get it. Really, although she’s embarrassed, she doesn’t mind _that_ much, because the letter makes so much sense; she’s sure that once Jenny reads it, she’ll agree. 

She sits quietly while Jenny reads, desperate to know what she thinks, but Jenny’s difficult to read when she wants to be, and when she’s finished, she seems to be taking a moment - to let it all sink in, Grace assumes - her lips pressed together so hard they’re white, her eyes on the ceiling. She takes one more deep breath and then slips the letter into her pocket. She’s trying to hide a smile, Grace thinks, but she doesn’t know why. 

The talk they have next is _so_ awkward, Grace can’t even. 

Grace doesn’t think she’s right, that maybe what she feels is just exaggerated hero worship or something, but she agrees on holding off on giving Dani the letter _for now_. Jenny makes a lot of sense, when she says there might be people nearer her own age to date, but Grace is unwilling to give up on this whole idea right away, so she nods and smiles and agrees. 

But...well... Jenny’s right, there are other cute people on the planet - Dixon from Math is pretty cute, all red-hair and freckles, and Lisa from English is always passing her notes...Her sixteen year old brain wants to hold on to this fantasy of dating Dani, but her sixteen year old hormones maybe aren’t so keen, and it’s surprisingly easy for Jenny to talk her into maybe asking one of the girls her own age out. 

The next time Dani visits, she doesn’t give her the letter. 

Jenny follows Dani out when she leaves and they have a quick chat on the front stoop. Grace can’t hear it but she does see a smile spread across Dani’s face, see her chuckle with amusement, before she nods and disappears. 

They don’t see her for a while after that. 

*

Grace doesn’t immediately ask anyone out, because it’s terrifying, because they’re there in front of her in a way that Dani isn’t, living and breathing and being people and Grace just _can’t_ walk up to a girl and ask her out, she can’t. 

But she does spend (a lot) of time thinking about it, and, yeah, maybe Jenny’s right, because she can’t imagine approaching Dani, not really in the way that she can imagine talking to Lisa after English, or bumping into Dixon in the halls. 

Her idea of dating Dani...maybe it fizzles away a little under the spotlight of reality that Jenny has cast on it. She lets the letter languish in her desk draw, and forgets about it for now. She spends the next few weeks filling herself up with courage bit by bit until she feels like she can put herself out there.

Dixon says yes. Her full name is Louisa Abigail Dixon, but everyone just calls her by her last name, so Grace does too. She’s the only other girl in school who’s even close to being as tall as Grace, and she has pretty red hair and a cute smile, and Grace stumbles through an incredibly awkward proposal in the middle of the hallway at school that she doesn’t even get half-way through before Dixon shrugs and smiles and blushes and says, “Okay.”

Their first date is at Grace’s house - there’s no-where else to go. It’s not like pre-Machine, when Grace remembers Taco Bells and bowling and parks and the ocean...it’s her house, or the school, or Dixon’s house, and Dixon lives in a dormitory for people who weren’t so lucky to find a Jenny-and-Doug situation, so her house it is. 

Once they get to Grace’s, though, Dixon seems to withdraw - she didn’t realise that Grace wasn’t living in dorms too, and she seems snappy and anxious. It goes downhill from there, despite Grace trying her best - she shows her her room, and their collection of rescued and battered board games that they like to play on a Sunday, talks about how she knows Dani Ramos - but everything seems to wind Dixon up tighter, until eventually Doug offers to walk her home, and Dixon agrees. 

Grace is devastated - she doesn’t know what she did wrong. Jenny tries to console her, tries to explain that Dixon was just sad that she doesn't have something like this, and it made her a little angry, but not at Grace and how Grace shouldn't think this is her fault...but Grace doesn’t understand. She ends up yelling at Jenny, because doesn’t she understand how _bad_ this is? How Grace doesn't know how she'll show her face at school again? 

It gets ugly, with Jenny trying to placate her, and Grace getting more and more wound up, and by the time Doug gets home she’s retreated to the worst place she can go, throwing the worst insults - “I wish my REAL mom was here!” - that she can think of. She slams the door and falls on to her bed, and honestly, it feels like the world is ending. 

It’s Doug that comes to see if she’s alright, an hour or so later, and she’s feeling a lot calmer. He sits on her bed and talks her through the whole thing, and maybe she kind of gets it - she knows she’s lucky, knows other kids who aren’t. When he gets up to leave, she hugs him tight, mumbles a thank you into his worn woollen sweater. He chuckles, plants a kiss on the top of her head, and tells her to get some sleep. 

* 

Dixon won’t talk to her at school the next day. She’s quiet and withdrawn, and when Grace tries, she gets stonewalled. She doesn’t understand it, and she tries again at lunch, but Dixon just won’t engage, and when she turns to leave she hears her mutter, “Spoiled brat.” 

Which...what? Grace doesn’t know what to do - maybe she didn’t hear her right - so she keeps walking, but the next day, she knows she’s not imaging Dixon’s friends muttering when she walks past, knows she’s not imagining the looks she’s getting. It’s a small school, and it doesn’t take long before she feels like she’s the target of everyone’s gossip, and she _hates_ it. So, she does the only thing she can - she goes directly at the problem. She finds Dixon, and she asks her what’s wrong. 

“What’s _wrong_ is that you get your stupid, perfect little life!” Dixon spits at her, and Grace doesn’t get it at all and Dixon is _so_ angry. She tries to explain that it’s not perfect, it’s _not_ , she’s lost people, but Dixon doesn’t care, fires back with: “And you’re Ramos’s little pet orphan!” And it’s honestly the worst that Grace has _ever_ felt. 

It’s a great big black hole that opens inside of her, pulling all of her feelings out through her feet, leaving her swaying and broken and empty, until an awful, terrible rage crashes in to take its place, and the next thing she knows, she’s swinging a fist. 

When Jenny and Doug and one of the supervisors from Dixon’s dorm arrive, they’re sitting next to each other in the empty lunchroom, a teacher chaperoning them. Grace has ice on her eye, Dixon has some against her mouth, and they’re both bruised and battered. The teacher pulls the three adults aside, and Grace hears the occasional word from the hushed discussion - _not uncommon, psychological trauma, good kids really._

Grace is and isn’t happy to see them; she doesn’t want Dixon having more ammunition, but she wants to go back to their house and drink tea and curl up on her bed. So when they come over, she breaks her own heart a little by standing up before they can help her and leaving the room, head down, ignoring them. 

It lasts until they get home, the door of the little house shutting behind them, and then she starts crying. She’s horrified at herself, but can’t seem to stop, and the story is dragged out of her in-between sobs and sniffles as they sit her down.

“Maybe I should go and live in the dorms like Dixon,” she sniffs at one point. She doesn’t want to, not really, but now she’s terrified that Jenny and Doug will make her, that she’s been too much trouble for them. She’s trying to get ahead of the pain. 

But they shake their heads, and pull her into one of their stupid, cheesy - but secretly, Grace doesn’t mind too much - hugs where she’s sandwiched between them, and maybe, maybe Grace feels a little better. Although she’d never actually tell them that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the sister fic of 'Don't wake me up (I'm trying to find you)' and tells some of the events from that story from Grace's POV. 
> 
> Have a lovely holiday season :)

Aside from the incident with Dixon, school remains pretty uneventful. She and Dixon don’t really talk again, but everyone else soon forgets the whole thing, and Grace makes a few tentative friendships. The time seems to fly by, and soon, she’s done with school, leaving the small warehouse basement that’s become as familiar to her as the prefab house. 

She doesn’t see Dani much through-out that time: she still pops into the house occasionally, and Grace sometimes sees her around the base (she impresses one girl so much when Dani waves back to her across the street that she gets her first kiss that night), but they don’t interact much. There’s an adult reserve to Dani that Grace has no idea how to get around, and a distance growing between them. It gets worse as Dani’s role grows and she’s officially ‘Commander Ramos’ and as Grace's own life evolves around her. 

It surprises her everyday, the layers her life has now, because there’s a moment when you’re on the streets, simply surviving, that you strip down your idea of life to the barest essentials and learn not to expect more. Now, it’s developing a depth she never expected, and it fills her with cautious excitement. It's not perfect: she still grieves, of course, for her old life, her parents, and sometimes the smallest things will trigger her. Doug mentions the cinema and popcorn one night, and the visceral memory of that hits her so hard that it takes an hour for her to stop crying, but on the whole...she feels like she has _hope_ , and realises it's not something she'd have if Dani hadn't rescued her, rescued everyone.

That thought...well, it just helps solidify her original plan. It hasn’t changed, even over the years - Join up, become a soldier, help Dani save people. It still feels like a pretty good plan to her. 

*

Grace Elizabeth Christine Maxwell is eighteen years, three months and forty-five days old when she joins the army. 

Dani Ramos still welcomes each intake personally, if she can, and she stands before them on a dais now, hair braided, an old shotgun strapped to her leg, hands clasped behind her back, delivering the most damn inspiring speech Grace has ever heard in her life as she welcomes them into the army of the human resistance. 

As inspiring as the words are, it’s Dani herself that captivates Grace. The power that exudes from the small woman is enthralling, and Grace studies every inch of her with abandon while she stands in the crowd, a few rows from the back, wishing she could tell if Dani knows she’s there. She can’t help but nudge the person next to her and whisper, “I _know_ her.” They just roll their eyes, but she doesn’t care.

Dani’s just...wow.

*

The training is hard, really hard, and Grace has little or no time to follow-up on that thought, though. They’re put through their paces, and while that’s happening she moves from her little house into barracks, settling in with people who will become her future comrades-in-arms. The one dark spot on this new adventure is Dixon - billeted in the same block, they’re barely speaking, and Grace still picks up bad vibes from her. 

It’s while she’s packing to move in that she finds the letter she wrote a few years ago, reads it with a mix of amusement, stomach-churning embarrassment and horror, and immediately burns it. She thanks Jenny for not letting her send it, and the other woman laughs, nodding. 

It does, however, put the idea of letter writing back in her mind. She starts writing letters again, but the grown up sort this time, detailing her life and her training and the other soldiers. It takes her three tries to send the first one, but, really, she’s enamoured with the idea of being someone who communicates with the distant Commander. She gets replies - short, slightly impersonal, but Grace treasures them anyway, shows the first one around until Dixon catches wind of it, and the sneer on the other girl’s face is enough to make Grace feel oddly ashamed. She hides them after that, maybe pretends she doesn’t know Dani as well as she does, feels another inch of distance settle between them. 

Grace excels - top of the class in weaponry, hand-to-hand and close-range machine combat, she’s behind only to Dixon and a guy called Todd Hewitt in tactics. She likes Todd - kind, a little intense, but hard as nails - and they stick together to try and deny Dixon the top spot. 

One day, though, she and Dixon are dropped into a training exercise together and although Grace sees it as an opportunity to maybe finally change the woman’s mind about her, they don’t work well together. It’s a battle of wills, and Dixon fights dirtier, despite the fact they’re supposed to be on the same team. She unbalances Grace with old insults, re-opening old wounds (Grace isn’t top of the class because of her connection to Dani, but because she’s really fucking _good_ at this shit, for fucks sake), and they end up finishing last, screaming at each other in the shell of the old drop-ship used for simulated landings. 

They’re taken to task by the Sergeants afterwards: about how personal relationships shouldn’t affect their working relationship, about how there’s a war on and they need to grow the fuck up and shut whatever the hell this is down. She accepts her part in it with grace, as, after a moment, does Dixon, which frankly surprises the crap out of Grace: she expected the other woman to try and give her all the blame. Still...It’s not in her nature to shy away from things, so she tries to speak to the other woman while they're both shuffling out, embarrassed. Dixon’s standoffish, but not as rude as Grace expects, and Grace takes that as a win. She’s also still really pretty, a fact that doesn’t escape her eighteen year old brain. Grace is glad she’s not as tongue-tied as she once was. 

Life is a bit of a blur, after that. They’re rushing through training - arms, tactics, vehicles, equipment - and before she realises it, she’s approaching her twentieth birthday, and she’s a fully-fledged soldier. On her birthday, they all celebrate. Some of them have drinks, and she and Dixon somehow end up in a screaming match at one am, and in a janitors closet at two am, in an encounter that leaves her bruised in some really weird places from trying to have sex in a room filled with mops and shelves and ladders, but satiated. It kind of becomes an unspoken thing between them; a you-scratch-my-back kind of relationship that allows them to have the good bits without the talking, or deep feelings. It works for them. 

Dani becomes a distant hero-figure. Someone she admires, but maybe the hope of anything more crystallises into the adult understanding of the difference in their positions, their ages. It's funny though: Despite all the distance, despite all of it...there’s this thing, that she can’t really ever seem to shake. Even though her focus isn’t on Dani the way it once was, whenever she sees her walking through the base or through HQ or in the barracks, it’s like a ping on a radar in her chest that she doesn’t know she’s carrying, a sudden blip that gives her system a little jolt. 

*

Okay, so, she's giving up a little on the idea that they're ever going to, well, _anything_ , but she's eighteen and she has eyes and Dani's gorgeous, so she still stares in briefings and when they're being addressed collectively. She’s seeing her more now, as the newly minted soldiers are inducted into the reality of their situation via briefings, lectures, homework, blurry video footage of various Machine models at work. They have to know every Machine inside and out - its weakness, its strengths. Destroyers, Terminators, Hunter-Killers, Swarmers, Diggers, Lurkers - they have to be able to identify and destroy them all. There’s a warehouse on the very edge of town where the broken shells of defeated Machines lie on tables like frogs from her dimly remembered biology lessons, spatch-cocked, their innards on display so that scientists and experts can walk them through their make-up, the weapons, the weak spots. 

There’s a new player on the field, though - the Rev-1. According to the eggheads, ‘Rev’ stands for ‘Re-Evolved Model’; a super-sophisticated piece of tech that can outmanoeuvre and outfight the apparently outmoded machines already on the field. From the blurry helmet-cam footage that’s recovered from encounters, Grace can see a machine that’s faster than anything else, armed with a hand-cannon and a metal bayonet hand that they think could be some sort of nano-tech. They won’t know until they defeat one, rip out it’s brains, it's tracking chips and the self-destruct, and bring it back for study. 

There's talk, on the base, of whether they can turn any of this to their advantage, maybe fashion mechanical frames that soldiers could wear to enhance strength and speed. Sometimes the talk delves into theory - augmentation, machine enhancement for the marines, and Grace feels a deep disquiet whenever she hears this kind of talk - humans shouldn't be sullied by mechanics, otherwise, whats the damn point? Honestly, the whole idea is just...kind of sickening to her. 

*

Sometimes she'll pass Dani in the hall, or outside in one of the many vehicle or staging areas, but the gulf between them she used to pass over so innocently as a child, peppering Dani with words a mile-a-minute, feels difficult to gauge and overcome as an adult. 

Still, she hates it when someone - Dixon especially - rags on Dani. They call her the ice queen, call her cold and distant, call her an administrator rather than a soldier, filled as they are with the bravado and bluster of youth and vaunting their own prowess over hers. Grace always defends - none of them have seen her in action the way Grace has - and Dixon always mocks her when she does, which leads invariably to them fighting, which, more often than not, leads to them sneaking off to a janitors closet again and having angry sex. Their relationship is straightforward in some ways, and confusing as shit in others. 

So, she sees Dani around, but she doesn’t really _see_ her, not anymore. She stops writing letters. 

It occurs to her that, yeah, actually, Dani’s always been distant, hasn’t ever really connected with Grace deeply, and maybe they’re not wrong when they call her untouchable and distant and cold.

*  
Grace Elizabeth Christine Maxwell is twenty-four years, nine months and two hundred and eighteen days old when she hears the gossip that Dani is dating some hot-shot Major from the Eastern Division, and she feels a little bit sick at the news, doesn’t really know why. It’s not like she has ANY sort of claim on Dani, other than a long running sort-of crush that she’s sure half the damn base shares, but...it doesn’t stop her knocking on Dix’s door late that night with a bottle of something and a desire to get Dani out of her mind: she and Dixon still have an on-again-off-again thing that suits them.

The thought of Dani with someone...It sticks in Grace’s craw, for some reason, makes her fidgety and restless. The next time she sees Dani in the distance, the little radar within her tries and fails to wake into shaky life; she presses her hand to the odd ache in her chest. There’s nothing she can do, anyway, and she's not even sure why she'd want to - she’s recently been promoted, she’s busy as hell, and it’s not like they talk much. Sometimes, Dani still pops by to see Jenny and Doug, but half the time Grace is off-base and she only hears about it when she goes home for a visit and there's a small gift for a birthday or Christmas waiting. 

She thinks it's nice that there's still a modicum of contact, but she's not looking for anything else, not anymore.

*

Grace Elizabeth Christine Maxwell is twenty-five years, 10 months and two days old when she gets really, seriously hurt for the first time. It’s not the first time she’s been injured; she's practically a veteran soldier now, has a tonne of notches on her belt for Machine-kills (second only to Todd, she thinks) and has the scars and healed bones to prove it, but it’s the first time she truly _fears_ for herself, the first time the battlefield around her turns into noise and shadow and shrieking, the first time she comes home on a stretcher. It cools a little of her ardour for battle, will make her a little smarter the next time she goes out. 

It was her fault - she was too slow to turn, to get a bead on the Machine that popped up out of no-where behind her, and she got three broken ribs, a possible concussion, and multiple scrapes and bruises for her trouble, and now she’s hooked up a to drip that’s feeding her some pretty good shit. She doesn't really remember getting back to base, sort of remembers Todd and Dixon shadowing her to the base hospital, and now she's lying here, the only occupant in a four-bed room, in pain and half-asleep. 

The weird thing...The weird thing is...she thinks Dani actually comes to see her. It's hard to tell what's really real and what isn't when she's in a miasma of pain and drugs so to begin with, she thinks she dreams it, the late night visit from the Commander. If she doesn’t, though, it really does confuse the crap out of her. 

She’s semi-conscious, dozing, when she thinks she hears the door open, but she’s so high on painkillers, she’s not sure. But...there’s a shadow deepening the darkness behind her closed eyes as someone leans over her, and then there a touch on her forehead, a brush of fingers through her hair, and a soft exhalation in Spanish that sounds both agonised and longing to her addled brain. The radar in her chest, long silent, gives a tremulous, fractured ‘blip’. 

She tries, desperately to wake up, to respond, but her body and brain are hampered by injury and medication and the only thing she sees when she can force her eyes open through sheer strength of will is the door to her room swinging closed with a soft ‘click’. 

Huh. 

*

It takes her a week to recover enough to go back to her rooms, and another week to feel human. Once she's recovered enough to be bored, she starts turning over the mysterious night visit in her mind. She feels like...if Dani did come to see her, shouldn't she say thank you? Seized by a powerful curiousity and an odd excitement, she wonders if she can just...go to Dani's office, and decides that absolutely she can...what's the worst that could happen? 

She gives it a few more days, until she's regained a little more strength, and then she heads to HQ, wearing PT clothes that Todd helped her put on, gritting her teeth against the aching pain in her chest. 

She doesn’t quite know what she’ll say, not yet - they haven’t really spoken much as adults, and her idea of Dani has changed. She doesn’t see her as the warm protector in quite the same way she used to, more like a distant figure, untouchable and not as real, as...as _human?_ as other people she knows. But...something’s driving her toward HQ, so she puts one foot in front of the other and keeps going.

As she turns into the corridor housing the command staff’s make-shift offices (they’re still reclaiming, still building, still trying to figure all this out) though, she hears yelling from somewhere. A few steps later, she can hear more clearly - it’s Dani and her XO, Peralta. 

“-not good enough!” she walks into range to hear, and she’s never heard Dani like this, so, so broken, so enraged. “We lost too many!”

“With all due respect-”

“ _Don’t_ start, Jake-”

“With all due respect, _Ma’am_ ,”, And the steel in his voice checks both Grace’s steps and apparently Dani’s response. “You know _full_ well that you made a _bad call!_ ”

Grace can’t imagine anyone speaking to Dani this way - Dani, who’s been leading this fight for years, Dani, who seems so put together and always, always sure of what she’s doing. In an instant, her idea of Dani slips through her fingers, shatters on the ground at her feet. Grace has lost her grip on Dani the perfect Commander, the distant ice general; she hears, in the desperate exhortations of the fight, Dani the woman, the person, frightened and angry. 

She holds her breath, waits for Dani’s response, gets little closer until she’s feet from the door, doesn’t expect the silence followed by, quieter and with so much pain, “God… _Jake_...I _know_. And now...now I have to go and tell six people why their brother or wife or fucking _child_ isn’t coming...isn’t…” 

There’s a long, shaky silence. With each moment of it, Dani-the-Distant is replaced with Dani-the-Human in Grace’s mind, and Grace can feel the emotion what's happening behind the door in the tightening of her own throat, the blinking of her eyes, before Jake’s voice breaks it. “Yes, you do.” It’s factual, almost cold, and Grace doesn’t know why he isn’t comforting her until he continues. “And then you’ll come back here, and you’ll plan the next fight. You’ll get your head out of your ass, you’ll stop doing whatever the hell it is you’re doing to yourself, and you’ll do all of this _better_ next time, because that way, it won’t be six: it’ll be one, or two, or _none_.” 

There’s a moment of silence and then an soundscape that Grace interprets as someone opening a bottle of something, before Jake says, “Don’t,” and she hears the sound of the bottle being placed down hard. 

“You’re right…” Dani’s voice is stronger, still shaky, but stronger. “Jake...you’re right.” There’s movement then, and Grace panics, moves so fast she makes herself hiss with pain, bringing tears to her eyes as she hop-limps down the hall. She realises she won’t get away in time and launches herself through the nearest door it with a wince and a muffled swear just as Peralta and Dani leave her office, talking quietly as she presses herself up against the door, listening to them go. 

She sighs a sigh of relief on realises they’re gone...and then turns in shock at the sound of a cough. Behind her, a dignified officer with greying hair at his temple is staring at her from behind his desk, one eyebrow raised. The nameplate on his desk says ‘Stein’.

“This...This isn’t medical?” She asks weakly. “No…? Okay….I’ll just…?” she points and he nods, and she backs out awkwardly, trying to salute and failing with a wince. 

Limping back toward her room...Despite everything, despite the fact her chest hurts and she thinks she might have to lie down very soon and God somehow even her hair hurts, she feels oddly closer to Dani than she has in a long time, convinced - now that she's got proof of the human behind the General - that she did come to see her in the hospital. Dani's humanity hits her hard, suddenly - She's been given a window into the worst parts of Dani's life, parts that she's never thought about, and now all she can think about is how much Dani must have to deal with. It makes her realise how strong she is, how brave, and how much depth Dani has. She feels this new understanding crystallise around a desire to help, to somehow make Dani's life even one percent easier.

Grace doesn't know how she'll do that, feels like all of a sudden she doesn't know anything about anything, but she wants to _try_. She takes a deep breath, the certainty of her decision sinking into her chest. She feels...she doesn't know how to put a finger on her how she feels...her adrenalin is rushing, her breath is coming too fast and her body is one giant ache, and inside...inside, her radar is _singing_.


End file.
